Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

It feels funny to start a car with its own key. Blasphemous almost. Who would want to own something like a BMW? You’d have to take care of it like it’s a pet. The whole idea of owning things makes me queasy.

I adjust the mirrors and look back at Aki in case he has another pistol hidden under the seat. If he does, he’s not pulling it. He’s flat on his back, sweating and bone white.

“I don’t want to drive around in a puke-smelling car, so if you need me to stop, say so.”

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”

I turn the ignition and we head for the Chateau Marmont.

IT’S ONE LONG, wet shit storm from the hospital to the hotel. Drifters and civilians fill the streets. Civilians run and the slow-moving Drifters bring them down in groups, like hyenas. They grab people at gas stations and all-night markets, off buses, out of cars, and chase them off the roofs of nearby buildings.

The pack is the Drifters’ real weapon. A motorcycle cop in the intersection manages to get away from one group and runs straight into the arms of another. There are just so damned many of them. I have to drive on the sidewalk and over a few stop signs to get around all the abandoned cars. The Beamer is heavy enough that it makes a pretty good battering ram, so along the way I splatter as many Drifters as I can on the hood. Mostly I go for Lacunas, the vicious little pricks. They’re easy to pick out. Zeds lumber like windup toys, but Lacunas can run and climb and hunt specific people. And they’re intelligent enough to understand what’s happening when I crush their spines and skulls under my wheels. By the time I get to the Chateau Marmont, the front of the car is a slaughterhouse spin-art painting.

Aki moans and whines every time the car bumps into something.

“Aaaah! I’m losing a lot of blood back here.”

“If you were losing a lot of blood, you wouldn’t be able to talk, so feel free to bleed faster.”

I steer us into the hotel parking lot, minus a headlight and with a lot more dents in the hood and skull fragments in the radiator than when we started. Fuck me for having too good a time on the way over. I don’t spot the vans following us until I kill the engine and the vans are moving into position to block the only exit to the street.

“The cavalry is here. Want to give yourself up, kid?”

Aki pulls himself up into a sitting position using the passenger-side headrest. He looks outside through the windshield.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s a law enforcement combo pack. The Golden Vigil and Homeland Security.”

“Golden what?”

“God’s G-men. If you think I’m bad, see what happens when those feds and sky pilots get hold of you.”

“No way, man. No cops and no preachers.”

“At least we agree on that. Keep your head down and don’t make a sound.”

The doors slide open on the sides of the Vigil vans and they make a big show of moving their troops outside. There are a dozen true-blue men in black. None are holding guns, but all have the distinctive jacket bulge that says they’re packing. There will be more and heavier artillery in the vans.

I recognize the two guards on the gate from a few days back. I’d taken the Shut-Eye, Ray, on a roller-coaster tour of Downtown. Most of the others I recognize from when Wells tossed me out of his clubhouse and off the Vigil’s payroll. Even Marshal Julie is there, though she looks like she’d rather be on an ice floe wrestling polar bears.

Wells stands in front, hands behind his back, a corn-pone Napoleon.

“Hold it right where you are, Stark. Put your hands behind your head and move away from the vehicle.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“I sure as shit am, junior.”

“For what?”

“General assholery in the face of God and reason.”

“You know, just because you’re in love with that angel hiding in your van doesn’t mean you have to be her monkey on a chain.”

He shakes his head.

“You heard stories about Gitmo? We have black prisons over in the Arctic that make Gitmo look like the penthouse at the Bellagio.”